Mega Man X: The Zenith Interludes
by Erico
Summary: After Ice Beacon fell, the Scion's Zenith was forged. Sworn enemies of MI9 and all that it stood for, the Zenith hid in shadows to save reploidkind. But there are more things in the shadows than they even know of...
1. Hidden Parallel

_**MEGA MAN X: THE ZENITH INTERLUDES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**Hidden Parallel**

"_Three things cannot stay hidden for long: The sun, the moon, and the truth." –Siddhartha Gautama_

_

* * *

_

_Dr. Cossack's Citadel_

_Siberian Wilderness_

_September 3__rd__, 2131 C.E. (2 months after __Demons Of The Past__)_

_4:45 P.M._

Dust Man slowly made his way up and down the main corridor of the old and somewhat dilapidated castle. The loud, powerful suction of his turbine induction particle collection system left a dull drone in his wake, as loud as the vacuum cleaners of the previous century, but substantially more powerful. The few errant bits of debris from the last tour group were swept up in his approach, drawn in through the large slot at the top of his head, and smashed against the rest of the day's dust.  
Inside the gift shop, Kalinka Cossack idly painted her nails, looking up every so often to check the digital clock on the side of the wall, or to watch Dust Man's progress. She rolled her eyes after he strolled by one troubling piece of garbage that was stuck to the floor for the fourth time in the last eight minutes. The robot finally seemed to catch on that it wasn't going to budge, and tilted his body at the waist, leaning down closer to it. He applied the full force of his powerful suction against it, and still, it wasn't moving. Finally, Dust Man disengaged his "Dust Buster" as it was commonly nicknamed, and reached for the scrap of paper. Pulling it up, the reason for its stubbornness was finally revealed; a half-chewed piece of gum had turned into a powerful adhesive. He stood back up and stared at the pink, rubbery blob between his fingers that stretched when he tried to flick it off.  
"Perhaps we should prohibit chewing gum on the tour." Dust Man observed.  
"If we did that, we'd never get _any_ visitors." Kalinka told the robot. She was pushing towards her sixty-fifth birthday, but still was quite attractive. "Face it, we're more than a little off the beaten path as it is. If it weren't for all the allure about the Robot Rebellions, we'd be strapped for spending money."  
Dust Man looked at the only permanent human resident in the drafty old citadel. "Gum chewing has been routinely listed as an unattractive habit among your species. Why do young people insist on it, when it has a deleterious effect on their chances of reproduction?"  
Kalinka lifted an eyebrow. "What makes you think I'd be a good candidate to answer that question, Dust?"  
Dust Man shrugged, a rather bizarre gesture given his unusual construction. "You are human."

Kalinka rolled her eyes and got up from behind the gift shop's counter. "The last group cleared out twenty minutes ago, I'm closing the shop up early. Think I'll go downstairs for a while. Will you be all right up here by yourself?"  
"Of course, Mistress Kalinka." The robot replied. "I love to clean the castle."  
"You always did." Kalinka walked past him and headed towards a thermostat set against the wall of the corridor outside the gift shop.  
Dust Man revved up his Dust Buster again, but quickly shut it off after a second. "I'm full." He stated to nobody in particular, and a low chunky rumbling sound came out of his joints as he began to rattle in place. Kalinka held back the grimace and calmly unlocked the plasteel covering over the thermostat that kept curious button pushers at bay, then tapped in a sequence on the numeric keypad to unlock the controls.

The second combination had nothing to do with changing the temperature at all. The wall panel beside the thermostat receded slightly, then slid to the side on a hidden rail. Behind her, Dust Man expelled a thick, compacted cube of garbage and hardened dust, which thudded to the ground with all the acoustical cheerfulness of a brick.  
Kalinka sighed and marched through the secret doorway, towards the first of the Citadel's Sub-Basements. "And this is my life."

* * *

The first Sub-Basement, what had once been the Fourth Ring of Cossack's lair, was kept hidden from the general public. The Sub-Basement contained the lodgings for all of the eight Robot Masters designed and built by Doctor Cossack, as well as the power, water, and communications infrastructure that kept the castle running.  
Besides all of that, it also held Dr. Light's "Information Capsule", a last encyclopedic inheritance the father of modern robotics had left behind for the son he never got the chance to know while he was alive.  
And beyond that, even...

Kalinka Cossack stepped out of the elevator and marched into the Sub-Basement's central command and communications complex. Pharaoh Man, now goldenrod and silver instead of his original goldenrod and black color scheme, glanced up from behind the main monitor. "Kalinka." The robot master blinked twice, then nodded respectfully. "Business seemed slow today."

"You know how it is." She sighed. "Interest waxes and wanes for this old place. I'm the owner and guardian of a monument to my father's role in an age of madness."  
"And his greatest technological achievements." Pharaoh Man pointed out.  
Kalinka raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "You're lucky, little brother, that you added technological to that statement." She looked around the small complex, which was normally buzzing with activity...at least in the last few months. "Where is everyone, anyhow? I thought they'd be busy."  
"Oh, they are." Pharaoh Man got up from his seat. "They're all working in the **Sub**-Sub-Basement, getting it set up."  
Kalinka smiled. "Hmm. I suppose it wouldn't do to have X or Zero warp in for a visit and stumble in on their little operation."  
"That's a given." Pharaoh Man tapped a button on the main console's keyboard, and brought up a videolink with the Sub-Sub-Basement's command center. The smiling face of Bristol looked back at him. "Bristol, I've got the local network protocols established. You should have access to all Citadel communications and outbound Electrosphere links."  
_ "That's fantastic work, Phare. Oh, Miss Cossack! How've you been?"_ Bristol exclaimed.  
Kalinka smiled, one blonde to another. "Well enough. Can I come down for a visit? I'd love to see what you've all been doing with the place."  
_ "Certainly, but I'll warn you, it's a bit messy. My husband and that Allegro've marred the walls of the sparring center with their constant duels, and Horn and Hazil...well, they got a hold of your father's private cache of Vodka. They've been recuperating in what's left of the Medical Bay, and they haven't even finished it yet."_

Kalinka laughed and looked towards the ceiling. "Oh, God. I can imagine. Well, I'll tread carefully, then."  
A noise on the monitor caught her attention, as well as Bristol's. The reploid engineer glanced to her own main monitor in the Sub-Sub-Basement and blinked. _"Eh? What's this then, an E-Mail?"_  
Pharaoh Man brought up the inbox, and quickly identified the presence of an arrived electronic message. Kalinka glanced at the inbox briefly, and blinked when she thought that the Sender box was marked **Unknown** and the Subject line read **Your Presence in Moscow**. When she opened her eyes again, the message was gone.  
Pharaoh Man eased his hand back from the keyboard and glanced at Bristol's image. "Junk mail, Bristol. Don't worry, I've taken care of it." Without waiting for a reaction, he swiveled his Nemes headdress and face back to Kalinka. "Shall we head down, then?"

"Phare, what was that E-Mail about?"  
"What E-Mail?" Pharaoh Man replied innocently. "It was junk mail, that was all."  
"Well, could I look at it, at least?"  
The robot shook his head firmly. "Impossible. I've deleted it and overwritten the sector it was stored in."  
"But you could still get it back if you tried. Why can't you..."  
"Kalinka." The robot narrowed his eyes, and seemed to grow taller than his diminutive stature normally allowed for. His voice came out stern, almost growly. _"Drop it."_

Not quite sure what had taken place, and feeling more than a little disoriented by the strange event, Kalinka nodded mutely and followed as Pharaoh Man guided her to yet another hidden doorway in the already secret Sub-Basement that would lead them to the new base of operations for the Scion's Zenith.  
Pharaoh Man, who had survived Mind Freeze, escaped the confines of the Laws of Robotics, and fought with the reploids of the newly formed Zenith to save reploidkind from the threat of Ice Beacon, had always been a somewhat surprising entity to her.  
That one small moment planted a seed of doubt in Kalinka's heart. There had been times she had despised him, but she had always trusted him. But there was something about that E-Mail he had wanted to keep away from her.  
The question was, her naturally curious mind wondered...

** What?**

**

* * *

**

"You're doing it wrong." Willow accused him.  
Hanging with one wristclaw and both feet pressed against the side of the wall by the ceiling, Wycost turned his head around and raised his eyebrows above his sunglasses. "What, you wanna come up here and do it, sweetie?" He taunted her.  
The red-haired "Irish Banshee" laughed at the comeback and bit her teeth at him. "I just don't want it hanging crooked, is all."  
"Well, it looked straight to me!" The Bronx Bomber countered.  
"Of course it would. You're hanging almost upside down."  
Scowling, Wycost readjusted the large picture of Bastion and Bristol at their wedding, evening out the corner so the framed still image hung level. Not waiting for his significant others' yea or nea, he let go of the wall and fell back down the eight feet to the floor of the Sub-Sub-Basement's main residential suite. "There, done. You want it any better, you should have called Bastion to float up on those freaky wings o'his."  
Willow reached a hand out and briefly ruffled his short black hair before she pulled him in for a quick kiss. "What, and miss starin' at your bum again?"  
"You're insatiable, ya little fiery..." Wycost growled, stepping inside of her long legs.

The elevator leading up to the first of the Sub-Sub-Basement's hidden entrances opened with a quiet ding, catching the two lovers in the act. When Kalinka and Pharaoh Man stepped off, Willow was slung underneath Wycost with one leg wrapped around his back.  
Kalinka blinked several times, then made a show of covering her eyes. "Don't let me stop you two."  
Wycost and Willow detached, and Wycost managed a good-natured chuckle. "Sorry about that, Missus Cossack. I guess we get carried away sometimes."  
"Clearly." Kalinka looked around. "I see you've been doing some redecorating. Weren't you going to be out on patrol today?"  
"Yeah, I was." Wycost shrugged. "Bastion thought it'd be a good time to take Allegro out for a little hands-on training, so they took my place today."  
"The lads'll be fine." Willow reassured their benefactor. "Bastion can handle himself, and the other one is shaping up all right too."  
"So, came to pay us a visit?" Wycost asked Kalinka. The old woman smiled.

"Well, I thought I might. Is Bristol still in the control room?"  
"Last time we checked." Willow nodded. "You know how to find your way there?"  
"I'm old, not senile." Kalinka reminded the reploid gently. "We'll leave you two alone so you can...well, you know."  
Wycost wrapped his arm over Willow's shoulder as Kalinka and Pharaoh Man wandered off.  
"I think she got a little jealous, babe."  
"You're a pig." Willow shoved him off.  
"Only on the weekends." The ex-Hunter grinned.

* * *

Bristol pushed her seat away from the command console when Kalinka and Pharaoh Man arrived. "Ah, there you two are. For a bit, I was afraid you'd gotten lost."  
"Hardly." Pharaoh Man said. "We were distracted by Willow and Wycost in the main foyer."  
"They were snogging like mad again, weren't they?" Bristol laughed. "Don't worry, they'll get over it in another month or two. Bastion and I did." She pointed towards the screen. "And speaking of m'dear husband, they're off in Nairobi. Surveillance is coming through, loud and clear."  
"So you did get those new signal scramblers working after all." Pharaoh Man slightly widened his eyes. "That's some good news."  
Kalinka glanced between the two. "Is this something I should know about?"

"Well, it's not a secret." Bristol explained. "The way things are, MI9's probably infiltrated every sizable military and law enforcement group in the world. It's just a security precaution to make sure they don't listen in on us."  
"Now, hold on a moment." Kalinka frowned. "You took out their main headquarters. You blew up their doomsday weapon. I thought the rest of this was just cleanup."  
"So did I, at first." Bristol sighed. "But as it turns out, my old "Employers" kept their leadership scattered. Some of the old frequencies have been active with new orders. There's likely more remnants than we know about, which is why we've spent more time listening in and setting out feelers than running into combat. Putting an end to their little conspiracy's going to take work and patience...Something that they have a five decade head start on."

"We'll do it, though." Pharaoh Man promised the strawberry blonde reploid. "There will come a time when the world will be free of MI9's schemes."  
"I hope you're right." Bristol sighed. "Say, Phare, be a dear and go see if Horn and Hazil are up and moving around yet, would you? I needed to run some scans on them for the warp buffer."

"As you wish." Pharaoh Man gave a parting nod to his Creator's flesh and blood daughter before vanishing into the corridors of the Zenith's secret base.  
Bristol swiveled around in her seat and pressed her fingertips together, evaluating Kalinka. "All right, now what's bothering you?"  
Kalinka blinked. "You've gotten better at reading people." She moved closer to the lead engineer of the Zenith. "There's something going on with Phare that he's not telling me. You remember that weird E-Mail that came in right as you two finished connecting this place to the castle setup?"  
"Yeah, the one he deleted?"  
"Well, the message didn't have a "Sender" and the title was just really bizarre. When I pushed him about it, he got defensive. For him, anyways." Kalinka explained. "It's got me worried. It might be nothing, and he was just having an off day, or I could be imagining things, but..."

"But you'd feel better if I dug into the main server's memory banks and tried to recreate that message from the junk data?" Bristol finished. Kalinka nodded slowly. Bristol smiled again. "Well, I'm always up for a decent challenge, love. I can't make any promises, but I'll see if I can't come up with something."

"Thank you, Bristol." Kalinka said, relieved.  
Bristol clucked her tongue. "You took us in, knowing that our mission would brand us as Mavericks. We're still working off that debt, Kalinka. It'll be my pleasure to do this. Besides, it'll flex a part of my skills I haven't worked on in a long time...hacking."  
She rolled her chair back to the main console and started her search subroutines. "Come to think of it, this might be something that Wycost could help me out with. His skills as a police officer in New York's MSWAT division came with a dose of electronic warfare training."  
"Like that frequency hacking thing he built on his helmet." Kalinka nodded. "Yes, that's fine. But keep this held close to your chest. I don't want Phare getting wind of this...There's no telling what he might do."

Bristol saluted. "Righto. Though, I don't see why you're worried he'll fly off the handle. When you think about it, he's not much different from a reploid. A very short one."  
"You came by your free will naturally. He almost died for his." Kalinka retreated for the exit. "I'm heading back upstairs. Come get me when you find something."

"If I find something." Bristol corrected her.  
Kalinka paused by the door of the second hidden elevator.

"When." The Russian princess clarified. The elevator doors opened, and she stepped inside.

* * *

_September 5__th__, 2131 C.E._

_12:24 A.M._

Though reploids could function longer than humans before requiring a period of stasis, their performance could quickly become sluggish the longer they did without it. Stasis powered down most of a reploid's systems, allowed the nanobots within their bloodstream to recharge, repair, and restore their Internal Operations Energy, and converted memories and experiences from short-term to long term memory storage, clearing their buffers.

Simply put, Wycost thought to himself, he got groggy, cranky, and bent out of shape.

The Bronx Bomber yawned loudly and stretched his arms out to the sides again. He flipped his sunglasses back down out of habit, protecting him from the glare of the massive flatscreen monitor that Bristol was scanning over. She had a stubbornness to her, and that part of her personality was dominant.  
"You know, sweetcakes, I still don't get why you had to drag me out of bed for this." Wycost grunted. His eyes lidded half-closed as he leaned back in his chair.  
"Don't fall asleep on me, Wycost." Bristol berated him. "You may be best friends with my husband, but that doesn't mean I won't sock you in the arm to wake you up again."  
"Gee, izzat a promise or a threat?" Wycost glanced up towards the ceiling. "What are you doing up at this Godawful hour anyhow? Bastion hogging the blankets?"  
Bristol laughed airily, a soft little noise that snapped through the cold depths of the Fourth Ring's **Sub**-Sub-Basement with crisp intensity. "Not exactly. Miss Cossack came to me with a request. A bizarre E-Mail came in two days ago. Pharaoh Man intercepted it and deleted it from our servers, claiming it was junk mail. Kalinka asked me to track down the footprints of that message. Something about it, and how Pharaoh Man handled it, didn't sit right with her."  
"So you're taking the message out of the garbage bin, then? That's easy enough."  
"Not exactly." The blond shook her head. "Pharaoh Man deleted the message and overwrote the section of memory it had been stored in."  
Wycost said nothing for a bit as he raised his glasses back up. His fatigue was momentarily forgotten.

"Well. That's unusual, isn't it?"  
"It's excessively paranoid, is what it is." Bristol replied. "Even for one of us. Anyhow, it took me a day, but I've compiled what I can. I don't know what the contents of the message were. I can't access it, but I know he made a copy to his personal memory before he destroyed it."  
"And if we felt like trying to hack his positronic network, we could find out what it said." Wycost finished easily. "Of course, y'probably don't feel like doing that. Neither do I, actually. So, what's all this got to do with me?"  
Bristol froze the image on the screen and swiveled about to face Wycost. "I've done what I can here, but we're at the edge of my expertise. The fact is, Wycost, you're the best analyst and data-tracker we have in the Zenith. I can't tell you who sent the message. I was hoping you might be able to figure it out."  
"Aah, Christ." Wycost sighed. He ran a hand through his tousled black hair, then got up and strolled to stand beside Bristol. "You sure this couldn't have waited until tomorrow?"  
"I needed to speak to you about this privately, Wycost. You know as well as I do that during the day, we have more people running through here than the New Tokyo maglev hub has trains."

Wycost logged in a few keystrokes and brought up Bristol's file on the elusive E-Mail.  
Sender unknown.  
Contents unknown.  
Copied once. Original file lost, irretrievable.

"Hm." He narrowed his eyes. "Smooth work, all right. Mail server's clean."  
"I could have told you that."  
"Yeah?" Wycost snorted. "Well, I've got one better for you." He shrunk the window, then pointed to the net browser. "Check the IP interactions. He cleaned out the message, but I'm betting he didn't bomb the address exchanges." He leaned forward, a bit more smug than usual. "It's kinda like those old paper letters humans used to write. He may've burned the letter...but not many people burn the envelope. And envelopes have a return address."

Stunned at the sound observation, Bristol set to work following the Bronx Bomber's hunch. A half minute later, she made another pleased noise and beamed at Wycost. "You were right. At the timestamp of the received E-Mail, there's an IP address. The smoking gun." She rubbed at her blue eyes for a bit before sighing. "Can you make sense of it?"  
"What am I, a freaking magician?" Wycost focused on the address and frowned. "Hang on a second." He reached past Bristol and worked out another series of commands with one hand. His fingers danced across the console's surface. When he finished, he stepped back, surprised. "Well, that's unusual."

Bristol crossed her arms. "What is?"  
Wycost contemplated the right explanation before speaking. "See, if I wanted to keep a message hidden, I'd bounce it off a couple dozen IPs and use an anonymous E-Mail client while I was at it. But this message...It went from point to point. No sleeper nodes. No shuffle. These guys, they sent it straight on. Minimizes the chance of interception, but makes it tough as shit to hide the source. That's the tradeoff. So the IP you see is the one they were broadcastin' from. Follow me?"  
"Yes. So far." Bristol said cautiously. "So you know where they are?"  
Wycost gave her a look. "You know that IP?"  
Humoring her teammate, Bristol stared at the sequence of numbers. They were unrecognizable to her, and there was no flag announcing the IP's nationality.  
"No, I don't." She answered honestly. "The computer doesn't know it, either. It doesn't have a known IP area code. But that's impossible, isn't it? You can't exactly hide that kind of thing."

"You don't have to hide what people don't know." Wycost rubbed at his chin, seeming uneasy. "Or what they've forgot."  
Bristol could feel a headache coming on. She was also running short on sleep, though with better grace than Wycost was. "I'm not following you. What do you mean?"  
"I never would have caught it myself, but...I'm remembering something Doan showed me once. An old piece of tech. Real old. Like, Pharaoh Man's age old. It was one of them old-style laptop things, the kind that ran offa satellites instead of the Electrosphere for its networking."  
Wycost walked back to his chair and sank into it. "See, when they switched over to the Electrosphere network in the 2090's, they did away with almost all the old IP addresses for newer, better ones. That's why our system didn't pick up on it; This IP hasn't been publicly used for more than thirty years."  
Bristol felt a chill pass through her, as if an icy hand had grabbed the base of her spine. "So where's the message from, then? Who's writing to Pharaoh Man from the past?"  
Wycost dropped his sunglasses back down and clucked his tongue. "It's from Japan. Old Tokyo."  
Bristol flinched. "But...old Tokyo was buried. There's nothing left of it."

"Looks like that's not the case anymore." Wycost shrugged easily.  
Bristol closed her eyes. Yes, the headache was there now. "Can you look into it?"  
"Yeah, suppose I could. I was going to be going to New Tokyo to pick up some supplies tomorrow. I could...make a slight detour afterwards, I guess."  
"Good." Bristol smiled. "Be as discreet as you can, all right?"

"Yeah, yeah." Wycost lurched out of his chair and headed for the exit. "I'll be a freaking ghost. Tomorrow. Now, I'm getting me some damn sleep. You should too, honey."  
Bristol waved him off, and lingered behind long after the door to the Zenith control room hissed closed again. She brought up a map of Japan and stared hard at the region of land where Tokyo had once been. New Tokyo had built closer to the mountain. Old Tokyo had become a rich and volcanic-fertile patch of land.  
And somewhere in that tranquil sea of grass, a message had come bearing ill will and trouble.

"Tokyo." Bristol repeated to herself quietly.


	2. Wastelands

_**MEGA MAN X: THE ZENITH INTERLUDES**_

By Eric "Erico" Lawson

**Wastelands**

"_It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself." –Spock_

* * *

_New Tokyo, Japan_

_September 6__th__, 2131 C.E._

As Wycost had said, he'd had some business to attend to in New Tokyo. Rather urgent business, given the Zenith's current and ongoing mission.

As a former member of New York's MSWAT, and one of their most experienced members until his subsequent switcharound that led him into the Maverick Hunters, Wycost's skill set was geared towards investigation and urban warfare. He'd scouted out New Tokyo not long after landing there, and kept his finger on the pulse of the underworld. He doubted even Mega Man X and Zero knew as much about it as he did…then again, they always had bigger fish to fry than lowlife miscreants and chop shop runners.

Under the watchful gaze of the Bronx Bomber, a crew of reploid goons carried crates of reploid repair kits, EAS/Dash parts, and a host of other materials…both legal and highly circumspect. The military grade weapons systems, in particular, would have meant an extensive jail sentence for humans, and mindwiping or outright destruction for the reploids involved. Thankfully, the truck that his supplier was loading up belonged to a shipping magnate which doubled in smuggling…far off the radar, of course. Wycost had called in his last marker with the owner, Dullain Shaulfren, to make sure nothing would go awry with the shipment, and that it would be stored in the rent-a-space Wycost kept under a false name with no contact information back in New York.

The black market merchant scratched at the back of his neck as he walked up to Wycost. "Well, there you are. Everything on the manifest. I assume you've got the money?"

"Don't I always?" Wycost snorted. He was traveling in the less threatening garb of blue jeans and his favorite black leather jacket, and his omnipresent sunglasses were nestled up in his spiky black hair. "You got the wire transfer ready, Cargo?"

'Cargo', as the reploid supplier was known in the underground business, slipped Wycost a datapad. "I just need you to put in your account number and hit the send button, and we're all good."

"Yeah." Wycost punched in a routing number that led to a bank account out of the Cayman Islands…not even a century of turmoil and governmental change had altered the worth of that small region's anonymity. After a few moments, the Electrosphere sent a reply signal to the datapad confirming the money transfer. He handed it back to Cargo. "Done. You make sure your boys don't drop anything, Cargo. Just because you have the money doesn't mean you don't get to screw me over."

"What, and risk my cushy desk job?" The reploid pretended to take offense. "You wound me, Ballistas. Haven't seen you around in a while, though. What you been up to lately?"

"Same shit, different day." Wycost lied. Cargo knew him under an assumed personality he'd created from scratch. Ballistas, supposedly manufactured in 2128 in Beijing, was a "runner" in the underground for unnamed clients. He had similar false identities in New York…several there, as a matter of fact. Ballistas was more of a rush job, but it was unknown to government agencies. It was enough to get through the background check Cargo had run a year back on their first deal.

"Always playing it close to the vest, that's Ballistas for you." Cargo chuckled. "Well, whoever you're representing these days must be looking to start a war. An order this size, I had to be extra careful rounding up the gear. Anything happens, you don't know me from Adam, hear me?"

"Cargo, we've had a good thing going for us. You lie, I lie, and we leave the truth out of it. Don't go screwing things up now with paranoia." Wycost smiled and patted the reploid roughly on the cheek. "It doesn't suit you."

"Yeah, yeah." The merchant reploid brushed his hand away and glanced back to the truck. His men loaded up the last box, then closed the rear door and latched it shut. They thumped the back of the ride for the driver's sake, and the transport roared to life, rolling out of the dark corner between the warehouse and slums.

"Well, that's it, then. Your gear's off, and it's in your client's hands now." Cargo said. He pulled a slip transparency from the datapad's printer port and handed it to Wycost. "Your receipt, Ballistas."

"Thanks." Wycost tucked it in the inner pocket of his leather coat and slipped his sunglasses back down. "Time for me to get out of here. Until next time, Cargo."

"Yeah, call first!" The dealer complained. Wycost smirked at him one more time, then disappeared from New Tokyo's dim streets for points unknown.

The beam of warplight made only a small diversion, globally. His next destination wasn't that far off.

* * *

_Cossack Citadel_

_Zenith Command (Sub-Sub Basement)_

"All right, you've got me down here." Bristol sighed. She flopped into the empty chair beside Willow, giving the red-headed reploid who was her oldest and dearest friend in the world a tired look. "What did you want to show me?"

"This." Willow brought up a command prompt, then routed through the private database that the Zenith had set up. "I got Horn to help me out a bit. It's a search program."

"A search program?" Bristol blinked. She leaned forward and stared more closely at the command code. "What does it look for?"

"Communications related to MI9 and their activities. They've been avoiding the frequencies and channels that they used when we were still with them, lass, so we've had to be a little more thorough. Thanks to Horn, this wee stuffin' is also self-replicating."

"…You created a Trojan."

"Aye, in a manner o' speaking." Willow nodded laconically. "The way I figure it, the boys in charge of MI9 have their own sniffers. We go about this the wrong way, they'll backtrace the searches to us. This way, it's just another piece o' malicious programming in the Electrosphere."

"You do realize that this won't last very long, right?" Bristol pointed out. "The Electrosphere's policed quite heavily by various cooperating agencies."

"And that is why, my dears, you don't just have a random program." The two women of the Zenith turned to the visitor who trudged into the room, leaning on a walking stick he didn't need for anything save appearance. The elderly-seeming J.K. Horn, the retired reploid philanthropist and engineer, was still dressed for a Caribbean summer day in his shorts and Hawaiian shirt. He lifted his oversized sunglasses up and winked at them. "You hide it in the latest browser updates."

Bristol flinched. "You're kidding."

"I kid you not, my dear." Horn reassured her. "As far as the Electrosphere watchdogs are concerned, there's nothing out of the ordinary. To the users of Jovian, Bordersoft Lake, and Walkabout are concerned, the addition doesn't exist. It's designed to activate only during downtime, when their users leave their machines on idle, and the searches are erased from the hard drive after a compiled packet is sent off to an untraceable account operated by…yours truly." He took a deep bow. "Yes, yes. Hold the applause."

"Reploids seem to have rather inflated opinions of themselves." A fourth voice observed. Pharaoh Man marched into the makeshift command center of the Scion's Zenith, looking as regal as ever in his headdress. "Or perhaps it's merely the ones I have taken the opportunity to know."

"In our defense, Pharaoh Man, Horn doesn't exactly count." Bristol mentioned.

"Aye, he's daffy." Willow added with a wink.

"I think Hazil would beg to differ on that account. He just gave me my physical yesterday." Horn scoffed. "Not a loose screw rattling around in this head, I tell you."

Pharaoh Man gave his head a shake and dismissed the ridiculous moment. "Where is everyone else?" He asked. "I was hoping to go over the latest Citadel updates with the entire team."

"Last I saw of m'dear darling husband, he was upstairs helping Miss Cossack hang some new curtains in the living quarters." Bristol offered.

"And Allegro's…well, still in the training room. The lad works himself to death trying to improve his technique." Willow said.

"And Wycost?" The enhanced robot master asked.

Bristol frowned as if thinking. "Oh, right. New Tokyo. He was going to pick up a few more things. That's the planner in him, really. Always trying to be prepared."

"Aah, yes. I remember that now. He did make that note on his itinerary." Phare blinked once. "Of course, he should have been back by now."

"New Tokyo was his home for a good while." Willow suggested. "Maybe he decided to stick around, take in the sights."

"Most likely, yes." Bristol said quickly. A hair too quick, Pharaoh Man thought in the back of his head.

Not willing to voice his suspicions, the robot master nodded and turned about. "When he returns, please congregate for the briefing."

"We'll let him know." Bristol promised, waving at the departing Cossack robot.

Quietly, Pharaoh Man opened up a private connection to the Citadel's mainframe and queried a new search in the Electrosphere network. Wycost had come and gone enough times that his teleporter signal marker was well known within the old stone walls.

He ran a search for that signal in the region of Japan through an interlink that X had given him to the MHHQ scanners, knowing that it would trace the last inbound or outbound warp that Wycost had taken.

The return made him stop dead in his tracks down the corridor and thin his optics to squints.

* * *

_The Sacred Plains_

_Japan_

On October 15th, 2087, Mount Fuji had reawakened with terrible power and set the earth on fire. In the plumes of fiery ash and blistering magma, Tokyo city had been lost to the world, never to be reclaimed. Unlike other historical tragedies like Pompeii, there had been enough warning for the population to evacuate before Tokyo was engulfed and entombed.

Afterwards, the Japanese people didn't have enough heart left in them to reclaim their city, and instead focused on creating a new one. Three years later, the War of 2090 had wiped out large swaths of the historical record…which included old Toyko's location.

"Great, now I'm talking like Willow." Wycost criticized himself. He stomped about some more over the wild and untouched plains of Japan. Ground made fertile from the volcanic soil made grass into an ocean of greens and golds. "Her and her damn history lessons."

Only one detail in all of her spiels was important to him. After Doctor James Cain had dug up Mega Man X from the long-gone Dr. Light's laboratory, the Japanese government had quickly placed a moratorium on any further excavations. The result of that political will was the Sacred Plains, little more than a massive nature preserve and unmarked memorial for a city lost to time. The rest of the world had been more than happy to let it be, as they became too concerned with the threat of Mavericks soon after to worry about old, buried ruins.

Wycost would have put it out of mind himself, had Bristol not asked him to look into the mysterious E-Mail. And in a sense, it was his own fault for recognizing the broadcast address.

No. Doan's, for teaching it to him. Yeah.

Wycost stomped around a little more over the grasslands before he gave up just staring at things. "You wanna find answers, you're gonna have to look harder." He told himself.

A quiet command to his warp generator sent him temporarily into the state of phased matter known as "Faintwarp." A quarter second's manipulation was all it took to send his civilian clothing into storage in his pattern buffer and draw out his usual equipment; full green and white body armor, a TitaniTefloAlloy bracer on his left arm, and his personalized Mark 18 Buster on the right. His sunglasses took on their true purpose, sliding down from underneath the fore of his helmet to mask his eyes from any attack or incredible glare.

All of it unnecessary, save for the Interdiction gear attached to the side of his helmet. Wycost brought it to life with a few taps, then scrolled through the options on his black visor's HUD.

"All right, let's see who's broadcasting." A quick sweep of the electromagnetic spectrum turned up…

Nothing. Wycost pursed his lips. "Huh. That can't be right." Dead spots in the Electrosphere were rare. Not unheard of, but incredibly rare. There was one in Vietnam that was pretty sizable, but there residual radiation from fallout was at play. Here, in the Sacred Plains?

"Great, so now I'm on a wild goose chase." Wycost stamped his boot angrily into the ground, leaving an imprint of his dash thruster exhaust ports against the grass. "She's got me chasing ghosts here." In more than one respect, really. The death toll from the Fuji eruption had been smaller than one would assume, but people had still died in Tokyo. Wycost had been around long enough that, while he didn't buy into the superstition many humans clung to, he'd experienced enough to trust his instincts and listen to the eerie sensations that plagued him.

There was something about this place he'd found himself in he couldn't put a finger on. All the evidence pointed to nothing.

His hunch said there was something here.

"Well, you ain't in Tokyo, Wycost. You're above it. You wanna find some answers? You're gonna have to dig for 'em." He summoned his Buster to the forefront with a calm thought and pointed it at the ground five meters ahead of him at a shallow angle. One of the crystal datanodes along the widest point of his trusty weapon lit up, and the option selected ran across his visor.

**Narwhal Striker active.**

Wycost allowed himself a grin and prepared to fire his homing missiles. "And I only know one way to dig."

An insistent beep halted the first pull of the trigger, and a warning in the corner of his visor's HUD made him look up into the sky. "What the?"

A beam of warplight that his Interdiction software had picked up on overhead came crashing down to earth, silver and orange fire. Out of the concussive blast of displaced air rose Pharaoh Man, looking particularly livid.

Wycost raised his visor back up into the groove inside of his helmet and waved at the robot master. "Hey, buddy. Whatcha doing out here?" The question belied the sudden knot in his gut.

Pharaoh Man lifted a hand up and pointed it at Wycost. "What do you think _you're_ doing out here?"

"Aah, I don't know." Wycost lied. "I think I just wanted to get out alone and do some thinking. Meaning of life'n all that."

"You can do that elsewhere." Phare responded softly. "Leave. Now."

"What, I just got here!" Wycost protested.

Pharaoh Man's eyes went to the Bronx Bomber's Buster. "And either you were dressed in combat gear for the Hell of it, or you were planning on blowing a few square kilometers of protected nature preserve into glass. I repeat. _Leave._"

Wycost stood a little straighter. "Just what are you trying to stop me from finding out?" He posed darkly. "What's the big secret here?"

Pharaoh Man's glare turned to ice. "Leave, or die."

Wycost had to laugh. "Oh, wait. You? You're gonna take _me _on? I think you've got some screws loose. You just remember who you're talking to. I had me 12 years on the force, and one year in the Hunters. I didn't live that long just being my cheery self, y'know?"

"You're here because Kalinka didn't listen to me." Pharaoh Man said. "She enlisted your help, and I suspect Bristol's as well. I'm going to tell you this only once, so listen. You do not belong here. You. Must. Go."

"And if I stay, the two of us duke it out, huh?" Wycost scratched at his chin. "The two of us. Pals. Comrades. We can't afford to be doing that. If we go down, MI9 wins. You know what happens then."

Pharaoh Man began to glow, and the aura intensified around his extended hand. The robot master shook his head.

"Your little war is less important than you know. Last warning, Wycost."

The former Maverick Hunter and the most advanced robot master ever made by Dr. Mikhail "Sergei" Cossack stared off. Wycost set his warp jump, but refused to activate it. He only did with wide eyes once Pharaoh Man hurled a ball of condensed plasmic energy right for him.

The orb crashed into the ground and left a smoking crater, and Wycost's warp signature screamed up and off into the sky. Pharaoh Man watched his Zenith ally depart, then let out a very long, and very human, sigh.

He felt the presence behind him, which had finally made itself known in Wycost's absence. The robot master turned, a grave look on his face.

"I'll take care of it." Pharaoh Man said. The figure gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, and Phare hardened his resolve. "It's my problem. Not yours."

Not waiting around for an angry response, Pharaoh Man warped away from the Sacred Plains. His warp signature chased after Wycost, bound for Siberia…

And a confrontation that had only just begun.

* * *

_Cossack Citadel_

"Jesus Christ!" Wycost swore, as soon as he reformed out of his warp beam. "He shot at me!"

He'd landed in a side conference room where Kalinka, Bristol, and Bastion had all been talking about something. His sudden appearance broke them out of what had looked like an otherwise pleasant conversation.

"Who shot at you?" Bastion demanded.

"Who do ya think?" Wycost snapped, glaring daggers at Bristol. "Pharaoh Man. That little friggin' bastard _shot at me!_"

"Phare?" Kalinka was shocked. "Why would he do that?"

"Gee, I don't know." Wycost tore his helmet off and tossed it onto the table, letting it roll to a stop between the old woman and Bristol. "Why don't you two tell _me?"_

Kalinka seemed to finally catch on, and looked to Bristol. "What did you do?" She asked, suddenly hushed. Bristol didn't get a chance to reply, as Pharaoh Man's warp signature crashed into the room as well, reforming beside the seething Wycost.

The green-armored ex-Hunter grabbed Pharaoh Man by the back of his Nemes headdress and lifted him up into the air. "What the frig is your problem, you little gremlin? Where do you get off shooting at me?"

Pharaoh Man glared back at him, not backing down at all. "You're lucky I made you leave when I did. Do you have any idea how much trouble you got yourself into?"

"From _what?_" The Bronx Bomber snarled. "Damn it, you'd better make some sense!"

"I don't have to explain anything to you. To any of you." Phare added, looking around the room to the others. "But I will give you this warning. Stay away from the Sacred Plains. Don't go near old Tokyo. I interceded once. Next time, you risk your own lives."

He slapped at Wycost's hand and dropped down on the ground. He pointed to Kalinka. "I told you to leave it alone. But you couldn't. You nearly ruined everything today."

"Ruined what?" Kalinka shook her head. "Phare, you're not making any sense! What is out there that you're so afraid of? What are you keeping from us?"

"You could just ask him." Bastion suggested. "Second Law prerogative."

Pharaoh Man closed his eyes. "Even if my Core Module still functioned correctly, I couldn't tell you, Kalinka. There's too much at risk." He gave his head a shake. "There are promises I made to your father that I'm sworn to silence about. For your own sakes, leave it alone. Never go back there."

He stormed out of the room, and Kalinka ashamedly bowed her head.

"I'm sorry. All of you." She apologized. "This was…it was my problem. I shouldn't have got you involved."

"He's hurt, but I think he was more scared than anything else." Bastion offered. His discerning eye had gleaned that much from the robot master's shaky speech.

"Scared? For us?"

"He was protecting us, or protecting whatever's there." Bristol added. "Maybe both, I don't know."

Wycost warped out of his armor and tucked his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket. "Maybe. But he said something to me before we left the Plains. He said, '_your little war is less important than you know.'_ And he meant it, too."

"We're fighting to destroy MI9, to ensure a peaceful future for all reploids." Bastion exclaimed. "What's more important than that?"

Wycost scratched at the stubble on his chin again. "_What's worse than a Maverick_. We got MI9 as an answer." Worriedly, he looked at Kalinka. "My gut's telling me I don't wanna know what's worse than MI9."


End file.
